Veteran ABC chief international correspondent Phil Williams to retire

The ABC correspondent Phil Williams has borne witness to the world’s biggest news events for more than four decades but his enthusiasm for storytelling is undiminished.

“I’m still naively excited, like a little boy by telling stories,” Williams tells Guardian Australia. “It’s really not the adrenaline that drives me, it’s just telling and explaining people’s stories to my tribe.

“There’s nothing heroic about it. I’m curious. I’ve been curious forever. And I’ve just happened to pick the international stage to do that on.”

But at the age of 64 the ABC’s chief international correspondent is pulling up stumps.

“It’s impossible to know the right moment to go, but I don’t want to be covering the Cootamundra show at 95,” he says.

Friday is his last day at the broadcaster, where he began his extraordinary career reporting on the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 and ended it by spending seven months covering the defeat of Donald Trump and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.

It’s not the blockbuster stories that Williams will be remembered for but rather his ethical and empathetic style.

The ABC News Breakfast co-host Lisa Millar, who took over from Williams as London bureau chief in 2015, says his legacy is his emotional intelligence.

“Phil’s retirement means we’ve lost someone who dedicated his career to incredibly ethical and empathetic journalism,” Millar tells Guardian Australia. “I’m not sure anyone has ever matched him. He cared not only for the people he reported on, but the people he reported with.”

Before approaching people on what is often the worst day of their lives, Williams has always applied what he calls the family or friends test, asking himself: “How would I like my mother, or sister or friend to be treated in this situation? Would this be fair to my family?”

The veteran journalist has been the eyes and ears of ABC viewers on the world stage, covering everything from the September 11 attacks in the US and the ensuing Iraq war to the Arab spring, the earthquake in Haiti and London’s Grenfell Tower fire.

He’s covered terrorist attacks in Norway, Russia, France, Spain and the UK, and natural disasters all over the world and at home, including the bushfires in 2020 when he filed memorable reports from Eden. He’s been under fire in war zones and was badly beaten up in a riot.

But it was the Beslan school siege in 2004 that left him reeling. He was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and, when he recovered, he was determined to help other reporters deal with the after-effects of witnessing a tragedy at close range.

Not even the PTSD from Beslan could stop his drive to report. Unlike most foreign correspondents, who return home after a tour of duty, Williams stayed on the road, making him one of the most experienced field reporters of his generation, and a familiar face in the lounge rooms of Australia.

“At no stage have I ever thought I can’t do this any more,” he says. “It’s a bit of an addiction.”

Williams says none of it would have been possible without the patience and tolerance of his family, who’ve put up with him “missing most birthdays” and abandoning them while on holiday for breaking news in another part of the world. “I even missed my own farewell,” he says.

Starting off in an era of film, he has seen enormous technological change at the ABC, where he spent 40 of his 46 years in journalism, but says the biggest revolution in news has been the ability to report from anywhere at any time, even on a mobile phone.

It takes great discipline to be in the moment and let the action and sound around you play out on camera

Craig McMurtrie

The need to go live on television, radio and online, however, has meant a crushing schedule for foreign correspondents and a loss of some quality in the final product.

“There’s an immediacy that the audience expects and demands,” Williams says of his roster of seven live crosses on an ordinary day.

“I think what suffers probably is the finely crafted package because you have less time to go out and gather your own original material and talk to the people and get their stories.”

Despite witnessing horror on a massive scale Williams says he has “built a resilience”.

“I’m not detached, you know, I will cry. It upsets me, I can cry now thinking of things. But I can get through it and move on to the next story.”

The ABC’s editorial director, Craig McMurtrie, a former correspondent himself, says Williams makes the craft look effortless.

“It isn’t,” McMurtrie says. “It takes great discipline to be in the moment and let the action and sound around you play out on camera. He has led ABC reporting from impossibly difficult and dangerous locations so many times. And through it all he has remained the most warm and generous of colleagues. He is an exemplary broadcaster.”